With More Than Good Luck
by SweetG
Summary: -Puck/Kurt undertones, sequel to "With a Sense of Deep Peace"-  ...Sarah Puckerman is turning fifteen -though she still feels mostly like a little girl-, and it's raining outside. But it doesn't feel oppressive, it feels like a sweet reminder.


This is a sequel of sorts to a story called "With a Sense of Deep Peace". It can be found on my profile and on my LJ account.

Sarah Puckerman is turning fifteen.

Sarah's hair has always been short and dark and a bit curly, her eyes are some shadowy green tone that Kurt insists on calling _fern green_, and her skin is very much like her brother's, dark and lean.

In the past, she'd never been one of those girls to look at herself in the mirror and think _ugly;_ but she'd also never been one of those girls that looked at themselves in the mirror –smiling and sure and filled with comfort- and thought _pretty_.

She kind of always sat in the middle. In a high, high bench with her feet dangling softly in the air.

Sometimes it had been frightening, because she was not entirely convinced that one day she wouldn't wake up and just _fall_ and start hating everything about herself (about her body, her face, her _life_).

And right about then (on the day of her eleventh birthday, when it was raining outside –gloomy spattering raindrops that washed over everything but what was really important- and she was alone), Kurt Hummel came into her life.

He came into her life in a flurry of colors and wide mouthed smiles and bright laughter, and a wide vocabulary full of scholarly words, and color coordination, to make her feel _beautiful_, and probably to make her realize a thing or two about life.

He came into her life to take her _shopping_, of all possible things. And well, not to sound overly sappy or anything, but that one shopping trip? It kinda changed her life.

She spent an evening with him, sailing through people that talked about their own lives in loud loud voices –as to be heard, as to say _hey, i'm here, notice me, don't leave me alone with what i've got to say_-, going from one store to another, trying all sorts of -beautiful, hideous, ridiculous, sensible, outlandish, common- outfits on (it was kind of embarrassing, but he kept buying and buying things for her, and whenever she tried to protest he just told her that a lovely lady needed a lovely wardrobe, and _really_ since it was Sarah's birthday Kurt obviously had the moral obligation to buy her incredible presents. It was only logical) and talking about everything under the sun.

Sarah remembers being a lonely girl, and telling him i_ have one or two friends, but they never come home, i think they are scared of Noah and mama_ and telling him _i don't like the other girls in my class, they are sort of dumb and really mean_ and telling him _i don't like it that mama has to work so hard, and i don't like it that Noah gets into so much trouble, and i don't like it that my dad left_.

She had sort of bared herself to him, because he kept smiling such a _kind smile_ at her (a _kind_ one, and not a _condescending_ one, like the one that her teachers used to give her every once in a while when she decided to spend breaktime reading a book in the library) that her childish innocence had deemed him safe, had deemed him deserving of her confessions.

And he had repaid her in kind. He'd told her about his life. About the good things, the ones that wouldn't hurt a kid, the ones that Sarah had believed for about an year that were the only ones, because Kurt had always wanted to shield her from the ominous ways of the world.

(She had been shielded only until the day Charlie Ross from her seventh grade class told her your_ brother and his boyfriend will burn in hell, the little fags_. which stings, and gets her a week's worth of detention for punching the kid in the nose. But in the end doesn't matter much, because Kurt is awesome and he makes his brother happy.

...And, oh well, she still wishes she could marry him, but that's life.)

And she remembers that her brother came looking for them at some point, and had kissed her forehead and wished her a happy birthday and held her hand through the rest of the trip.

(Looking back at that, he had probably completely forgotten about her birthday. It doesn't hurt her feelings, however, because he hasn't since then; and even if he did, she knows how much he loves her, knows that he'd kill and die for her.)

She remembers then, when the three of them together went into a particularly expensive-looking store and Kurt made her try on a little sundress that had looked extremely white and extremely delicate and way too nice for her.

She hadn't ever felt like one of the _pleasant_ looking ones. And though she hadn't felt like one of the _unpleasant_ looking ones, either, she just couldn't picture herself wearing something that would've fitted like a glove to some of the other girls in her class, one of the popular ones. One of those girls whose mothers (or _fathers_) could pick them up from school, one of those girls that smiled and looked happy, and never looked the way she sometimes felt.

(Sometimes she felt alone, but that was alright, because it was nobody's fault.)

But then she wore it and looked at herself in the mirror, and something inside of her changed. Something minute but really important, one of those things that she had never let herself think about but were just waiting for her to look the other way to latch into her spirits and drag her down.

The dress looked _good_ on her. She looked _good_ with it. The stark white color made her look different.

"Regal", is what Kurt said when she showed them, "it makes you look regal and every bit the princess you are."

And then Puck had looked at her with this affectionate glint in his eyes and said, "Yeah, it looks good on you, shrimp."

To what she answered, "stop calling me non-kosher names, or I'll tell mama."

Which made Kurt laugh happily

And in that moment, dressed up and _happy_ and escaping from loneliness with Kurt-who-smiled-at-her and Noah-who-called-her-shrimp, she felt that something that had been shattered all this time had been replaced with a warm feeling of contentment, of _ease_. Of knowing that she was going to stop feeling lonely from time to time, that this was a new start.

That day, Sarah had turned eleven; today, Sarah Puckerman is turning fifteen.

Sarah is turning fifteen and she is mostly the same little girl. She still doesn't really like the other girls in her class, and she still doesn't like the fact that ma has to work insane hours, and she still wishes she knew why her father left them ( sometimes still wishes that he hadn't), but at the same time, everything is different.

She's not lonely anymore. She has _friends_ (real ones that love her and spend huge amounts of time with her, real friends to laugh and cry with) and she has learned to laugh freely, and even though she still doesn't look at herself in the mirror and thinks _pretty_, she _does_ look at the mirror and thinks _regal_.

(She's turning fifteen, and it's raining outside. But it doesn't feel oppressive, it feels like a sweet reminder; she is wearing an elegant white dress, and she's alone in her house, waiting. Today Noah and Kurt are coming from Ohio State to visit her.)


End file.
